Trilateral Camp David summit and its historical implications

By Yun Byung-se

The trilateral Camp David summit slated for Friday will go down as a new chapter in the history of Northeast Asia for symbolic and substantive reasons. This is the first time that the leaders of the United States, South Korea and Japan are gathering for a standalone trilateral summit and not on the sidelines of multilateral summits like in the past. Remarkably, it is taking place just three months after their most recent meeting at the Hiroshima G7 Summit, and will be the fourth since President Yoon Suk Yeol's inauguration in May last year.

President Joe Biden's choice of Camp David, the presidential retreat, as the venue must have been well thought out and is meaningful. He probably intended this summit to be another historic milestone like the 1978 Camp David summit of the three leaders who signed the Camp David Accords. That was a turning point for a historic reconciliation between Israel and Egypt and established a framework for the Peace Treaty signed by the two countries the following year.

Substance-wise, pre-briefings from three capitals provide a rough sketch of the envisaged outcome ― milestones that could be set this time and the future evolution of the summit. The key message is that this summit will be a new stage of trilateral cooperation. For example, they are expected to regularize this separate summit at least once a year, meaning it will be a summit process we are witnessing in many other parts of the Indo-Pacific and the world.

Certainly, President Yoon's bold initiative towards Japan over the past history issues prompted this virtuous cycle of bilateral and trilateral interactions, including the exchange of visits between President Yoon and Prime Minister Fumio Kishida as well as President Yoon's state visit to the U.S. Thus, it is no coincidence that a separate summit is held in the year marking both the 70th anniversary of the ROK-U.S. alliance and the 25th anniversary of the Joint Declaration for A New Japan-Korea Partnership.

From my standpoint, the Camp David Summit is expected to be differentiated from previous ones in four substantive and future-oriented ways.

First, it will adopt a Magna Carta document of guiding principles for future trilateral cooperation, including the vision of the future, common values and a rules-based international order.

Second, today's summit is expected to adopt action-oriented sectoral statements to implement their trilateral vision in the face of multiple regional and global challenges. It will lay out their joint strategy to upgrade their coordination, broadly in areas of global governance, military and economic security, trade and technology, as well as on some specific areas of concern, such as the North Korean nuclear and missile threats. Launching an annual trilateral military exercise will be a good example.

Third, it will evolve into a built-in trilateral mechanism or institution going beyond a summit process, with multi-layered sub-bodies to address new geopolitical and geo-economic challenges in the Indo-Pacific and the world in a more integrated way.

U.S. President Joe Biden attends a photo op on the day of trilateral engagement with Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Korea's President Yoon Suk Yeol at the G7 Summit at the Grand Prince Hotel in Hiroshima, Japan, May 21. Reuters-Yonhap

"Built-in" also means that this mechanism will be less affected by the change of governments in three countries, making it hard to "reverse" through unilateral political decisions. For the U.S., it will represent a transformation of the weak trilateral link of its Indo-Pacific and global strategy into one strong troika to be on a par with Quad and AUKUS, at this historical inflection point.

In the case of Korea and Japan, they could be less subject to past historical issues by decoupling them from the trilateral cooperation agenda as much as possible within the firewall of a new trilateral mechanism. Now, the linchpin (ROK-U.S. alliance) and the cornerstone (U.S.-Japan alliance) of regional and global peace and prosperity can reinforce each other. In reality, however, they will have to overcome daunting obstacles at home and abroad on the road to a higher level of security cooperation, not to mention China's criticism of what it calls a "trilateral military alliance" in the region.

Lastly, if this summit process proceeds smoothly, that will certainly help the Yoon government's pursuit of the Global Pivotal State (GPS) initiative and Indo-Pacific Strategy, and probably its wish to join the G7 Plus. Further, it could pave the way for a new reconciliation agreement or declaration between Korea and Japan in time for the 60th anniversary of their normalization treaty of 1965. We could benchmark the Franco-German Treaty of Friendship (Elysee Treaty) of 1963 and its update Treaty of Aachen of 2019.

As we set forth on a long journey, we could start at a comfortable pace and then adjust our gears later, hoping and believing that this positive spirit will be the legacy for the succeeding governments in three capitals.

On a concluding note, I wish to see the three leaders start calling each other on a first-name basis for the first time in the history of their trilateral relations. In diplomacy, friendship among leaders is a key component of their mutual trust and vice versa.

Yun Byung-se, a former foreign minister of South Korea (2013-2017), is now chairman of NEAR Global Survey Project, a board member of the Korea Peace Foundation and a member of several ex-global leaders' forums and task forces, including the Astana Forum and its Consultative Council as well as the Task Force on U.S. Allies and Nuclear Weapons Proliferation sponsored by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.